Category Archives: Christian ethics

5 November is the anniversary of the invasion of the Maori settlement of Parihaka, Taranaki in 1881.

I regularly teach a course called “Violence and Nonviolence in the Christian Tradition” at Pacific Theological College. In this course I include a session on “Nonviolent Resistance” looking in detail at what happened at Parihaka and how that can inspire Christian nonviolent resistance against injustice as well as reconciliation. For those interested to learn more here is are some entry-level links followed by lists of videos worth watching and my class reading list:

Reading — Isaiah 24:3-6 (NRSV)

3 The earth shall be utterly laid waste
and utterly despoiled;
for the LORD has spoken this word.
4 The earth dries up and withers,
the world languishes and withers;
the heavens languish together with the earth.
5 The earth lies polluted
under its inhabitants;
for they have transgressed laws,
violated the statutes,
broken the everlasting covenant.
6 Therefore a curse devours the earth,
and its inhabitants suffer for their guilt;
therefore the inhabitants of the earth dwindled,
and few people are left.

Reflection

Last week saw a greatly anticipated event as Pope Francis issued his second encyclical letter, “Laudato Si’“. The title is Latin, and can be translated “Praise be to you”. The subtitle in English is “On Care for Our Common Home.” For non-Catholics an encyclical letter is a message issued by the Pope for teaching the church, and sometimes others. In this case The Pope addressed his encyclical to all peoples on planet Earth. It was largely on the topic of climate change, which, as we know, is an especially important issue for our Pacific region. The Pope’s wider concern was that humanity is destroying the earth and that we humans need to take greater care of the planet on which we depend on for our very survival.

In place the Pope used colourful language in the encyclical. For example, he wrote:

“The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth.”

He also commented on the kind of situation some of us face in the Pacific. He wrote:

“it is essential to show special care for indigenous communities and their cultural traditions … in various parts of the world, pressure is being put on them to abandon their homelands to make room for agricultural or mining projects which are undertaken without regard for the degradation of nature and culture.”

What does this all this have to do with peace, our special concern this week?

First of all, and most simply, war and conflict is not good for the environment. As Pope Francis rightly observes:

“War always does grave harm to the environment and to the cultural riches of peoples, risks which are magnified when one considers nuclear arms and biological weapons.”

To anyone who has been in conflict or even seen the photos of war, this seems obvious. But even in peacetime, preparations for war are massively harmful. For example, the USA is planning to use Pagan Island, far north of Papua New Guinea, for live bombing practice and land invasion training. This is expected to devastate the pristine forest, home to some rare species. And we all know of the damage done by nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific by both the American and the French.

So it makes sense to say that peace, true peace (in which we are not preparing for war), brings a huge benefit for the environment. But there is another, perhaps more important link between peace the environmental care. And that is that one cannot harm the environment too much without oppressing people and undermining the basis for peace.

Isaiah makes clear the connection between environmental degradation and human sin. In Isaiah 24:5, he writes

The earth lies polluted
under its inhabitants;
for they have transgressed laws,
violated the statutes,
broken the everlasting covenant.

Firstly, we could say that according to the Pope’s analysis, humanity is at war with the planet. The land and sea and atmosphere have been violated and laid waste by our extraction, production, and consumption. Mining and oil companies have penetrated and attacked the earth so that the earth will be forced to give up its riches. And we have all treated the land and atmosphere as a dumping ground for our waste. I think that this imagery helps us to see more clearly what we are doing to the earth.

We can predict that this war on the planet will become increasingly aggressive as the earth gives up its resources less and less readily. Oil used to be easier to find, but now oil companies are moving to drill in the fragile Arctic. They are already extracting oil and gas through fracking which involves violating mother earth to force it to give up its hidden wealth.

We should also be aware that this is also a war on people. Communities are disrupted and displaced to make way for oil and gas extraction and mining. These practices of extracting and then burning fossil fuels have become the kind of curse that Isaiah wrote about. In verse six he says:

Therefore a curse devours the earth,
and its inhabitants suffer for their guilt;
therefore the inhabitants of the earth dwindled,
and few people are left.

People are already suffering for these industries, whether through air pollution, sea level rise, or other climate change related problems. Scientists fear that the worst is to come.

This curse is often justified in the name of human domination over nature. And here is another important link between peace and the environment. The domination of other humans and the domination of nature are mutually reinforcing. What does this mean? Let me give two examples.

If we think it is OK to remove the top of mountain to get at the gold and copper underneath, we might also think that it is OK to remove the head of the person protesting the arrival of the miners.

Or, if we think is OK to rape someone’s mother, it will probably not occur to us that there is anything wrong with violating mother Earth.

I’m not sure which way the connection works, perhaps we dominate people because we have first dominated the earth, or perhaps we dominate the earth because we first dominated people. Whichever way it is, I’m convinced that these forms of domination and power and violence are closely linked.

In this vein, the Pope writes of our sister creature, earth:

“This sister now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her. We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will. The violence present in our hearts, wounded by sin, is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of life.”

To be peace-makers means that we must seek to be peace at God, with God’s creation and with each other. We cannot separate these.

Isaiah would, I think, agree. The earth suffers not only because we violate the earth, but also because we don’t follow the statutes and laws of God, which are often rules about how we treat each other.

But Isaiah also offers a glimmer of hope. In the middle of chapter 24 there is a group praising and honouring of God. It is difficult to tell whether these people are oblivious to the destruction of the earth, or whether they are a faithful remnant in the midst of the unfolding chaos.

One interpretation comes from the Ancient Christian theologian Eusebius of Caesarea. In commenting on Isaiah 24:15, which in the Septuagint translation partly reads “the Glory of the Lord is in the islands of the Sea”, he speaks of the church, “Which is located in the midst of the godless nations as if an island in the sea.”

What might this mean for us in a world of conflict and environmental degradation?

Can our churches be islands of peace in nations at war?

Can our churches demonstrate a way of life that respects both our world and our people?

Can our churches bring the reconciliation of Jesus to fighting factions and the Spirit of God into how we life at peace with other creatures of God?

If our churches can do these things then perhaps we might be able to claim to be those islands of the sea which show the Glory of God. We can be a faithful remnant in a world that is actively destroying its social and environmental fabric.

Eusebius also evokes an image of a church surrounded by a potentially hostile culture. This image also speaks to our lands in a time of climate change. It is other nations, those that surround us, that have largely caused climate change, with the island nations of the Pacific paying a heavy price for their greed.

The sea when it rises will transform from being a source of food and a means of travel into that which washes whole nations into a hostile sea. Can our churches live a different way of live and show the world how to live at peace with the earth and each other?

To be this church we need to transform conflict in our hearts, communities and with the earth. To do so we need to embrace an ecological way of thinking that recognises our interconnectedness. As the Pope reminds us:

“everything is interconnected, and that genuine care for our own lives and our relationships with nature is inseparable from fraternity, justice and faithfulness to others.”

Not only is everything in nature interconnected, meaning that the tree is connected to the bird to the sea and to the atmosphere, but human behaviour is connected to how we relate to other creatures.

In being peace builders we are helping to heal not only human relationships, but also harm to mother earth. There is no more important task today.

How about the Christian socialist and Anglican theologian Charles Gore?

Read what he says in his booklet “The Social Doctrine of the Sermon on the Mount” (1904)

We should do again what was done in the early monastic movement, as it is represented in St. Basil’s rule. We should draw together to centres, both in town and country, where men can frankly start afresh and live openly the common life of the first Christians. This can, of course, be most easily done in the case of those who are deliberately celibate. There is much talk of brotherhoods. Forgive the expression of an ideal. I desire to see formed — not in interference with existing methods — a community of celibate men, living simply, without other life-vows than those of their baptism or (if priests) of their priesthood, the life of the first Christians : a life of combined labour, according to different gifts, on a strongly developed background of prayer and meditation, and with real community of goods, which, of course, would cease in the case of any persons who might leave the community. The details are not difficult to arrange. I have some experience such as warrants a belief that such an ideal may become real. Such a community, “continuing steadfastly in the apostolic doctrine and fellowship, the breaking of the bread and the prayers, and having all things common,” — such a community would surely be calculated to make men see how holy and happy a thing is Christian life when it can free itself from entanglements and begin again au pied de la lettre.

I have been speaking of the unmarried, and I have said that the literal reproduction of the earliest Christian
community-life is easiest in their case. But the same ideal needs application to married life also. I do not see why such an ideal as the Moravians have, in fact, realized, of companies of married people living by a common rule, should not be of immense power among ourselves. I have spoken of what lies within my own experience, but the principle is applicable to laity as to clergy, and to married as to single.

Application Essay: Theological Reflection on “Mission in the Context of Empire”

Christians and the world they live in are groaning under the legacy of empires, old and new (Romans 8:22-23). In naming our mission context as ‘Empire’ the Trustees of CWM took a bold step, especially since they acknowledge that the pervasive and hegemonic nature of contemporary Empire makes it hard to see for some, especially Western Christians and other elites who are the direct or indirect beneficiaries of this Empire.

What is this Empire? Who does it benefit? Contemporary ‘Empire’ does not easily attract an adjective, such as ‘Roman’ or ‘American’ Empire. Indeed, “Mission in the Context of Empire” (MCE) does not seek to blame the West or even global capitalism, perhaps thinking that such things are too narrow targets for understanding Empire in today’s world. But perhaps not. Western ways of thinking since the Enlightenment have been rightly blamed for the rise of concentrated political and economic power that subjected the world to European empires from the 15th century onward.

Capitalism, which gets only one mention in MCE, would seem to bear much blame today for the devastating consequences of the economic domination of both political and environmental spheres. In the context of contemporary Empire, it may be time for the churches to declare that the theological justification of capitalism is a heresy. As the Accra Confession states, “the integrity of our faith is at stake if we remain silent or refuse to act in the face of the current system of neoliberal economic globalization.” Remaining silent about capitalism’s negative effects risks giving it tacit support. Actively supporting capitalism theologically could be named a heresy for several reasons:

It has a false anthropology distorting the image of God, positing humans as driven by competition rather than cooperation

It has led to inequalities which have divided the Body of Christ

It has plundered the Earth and seen creation a storehouse of exploitable resources, rather than seeing it as a source of God-given life.

It turns human work into the pursuit of profit, rather the glorification of God

It reduces human life to work, production, and consumption

Too often Empire has sought and encouraged theological support for those socio-political systems that defeated the previous economic and political systems and have become the newest status quo. An example was theology that served western democracy and liberalism in opposition to the ideologies of Fascism and State Socialism in the early to mid-twentieth century. Western theologies that promote or defend these theologies as universalistic have become essentially imperialistic in supporting democratic and liberalism capitalism around the globe.

The churches’ legitimate cold-war concern that the individual would be absorbed into the mass communist state has now been replaced with the promotion of the idea that the individual can find self-expression through consumption of capitalist commodities. But for many working class people capitalism has sacrificed workers, their families, and their environment to the ideology of profits, growth, and other capitalist idols. The individual is not so much at risk from absorption into a mass society, but is at risk from starvation itself. In other words, we have preserved the prospect of liberal individuality at the expense of the individual. This is witnessed to in the stories about individuals striving for life under oppressive situations shored up by imperial ideas. MCE, in sharing such stories places the individual before the Empire itself. Like the famous image of the Chinese shopper facing a row of tanks, the individual faces the crushing might of empire sometimes alone, but hopefully with the support of the church.

But in addition to exposing the might of contemporary Empire, what else does the church offer against it? Before this can be understood, the church must first of all be attentive to its history of its complicity in Empire. When the early church become the established church it established an imperial theology, which now must be challenged and uprooted. In this ongoing task the Reformed Church must repent of its involvement in empire and also the persecution of other Christians, such as the Anabaptists, who rejected this imperial theology. This act of kenosis, or self-emptying of its power, by the church is one helpful way of understanding the shift to post-imperial theology.

Christians may be well aware of the worst of the church, but can we also appreciate that at its best, the church and the Christian story offers a counterpoint to contemporary Empire? MCE shows us what this best can be. One of the things the church offers in resistance to Empire is demonstrating through its life together a new vision of life in all its fullness. Rather than the concentration of power, the church believes in the distribution of power. Rather than a life devoted to economic activity (being both a producer and consumer of the products of empire), the church offers life in all its fullness. It is an irony of Empire that it promises fullness to its people in times to come, but only once economic growth trickles down to the poor. This remains a false and deceiving hope.

Yet is the good news shared by the church more than an after life free of slavery to earthly power? A gospel message that does not incarnate itself here and now will struggle to be attractive to the masses toiling in service to the powers of Empire. Nor is it faithful to a gospel that speaks of the healing and feeding acts of Jesus Christ. The Gospel speaks of traditions of new ways of living that offer life in all its fullness in this world.

Mission, as the sharing of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, is a task all CWM partners share as the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:27). Another biblical image that might also be helpful in understanding CWM’s mission to Empire is the church as the family of God. All Christians are brothers and sisters in Christ. Like a family we are united, though divided. Just as families are sometimes split up by the need to become migrant workers yet remain family members, the church too is divided across borders and yet understands that it remains one united family.

For the Western church the understanding of mission in MCE means coming to terms with the post-Christendom world, where Christianity is not dominant and Christian cultural assumptions can no longer be assumed to be held by all the inhabitants of the nation. This requires a shift in thinking away from the notion that Christians can, or should, try to shape a Christian society through law or the state, and not export Western Christianity through the organs of the state and empire into other nations. It can be helped in this task of forming new ways of thinking through its emerging cultural status by learning from partner churches in lands where Christianity has always been a minority.

The genius of CWM and MCE is that just as we must learn about Empire from each other and the pain this causes, we can also learn about resistance from each other. What forms of Christian life together that resist Empire can we share with each other that are faithful to the cries of our brothers and sisters in Christ? In exploring these questions together CWM partner churches can begin to model new ways of doing mission together in the context of Empire.

Every child should find itself a member of a family housed with decency and dignity, so that it may grow up as a member of that basic community in a happy fellowship unspoilt by underfeeding or overcrowding, by dirty and drab surroundings or by mechanical monotony of environment.

In New Zealand there is currently a campaign in support of a Living Wage. While the adult minimum wage here is currently $13.50 an hour (see rates) the proposed living wage for a couple with kids is $18.40 (according to research done bythe Family Centre Social Policy Research Unit). The living wage campaign aims at morally persuading employers to pages wages adequate for their employees to support their families in a life with dignity with full-time work.

Supporters of the campaign include church agencies from all denominations. I was a little bemused to see that the director of the Catholic development agency, Caritas, was reported in the following way:

Speaking in support of the principle of a living wage, Caritas Director Julianne Hickey says Catholic social teaching has long supported the concept that workers have a right to a just participation in the fruits of their labour. This means working people must be able to look after their families adequately on what they earn.

‘The concept of a living wage was developed over 100 years ago by United States theologians, a very practical application of Catholic social teaching on just wages,’ says Mrs Hickey. [SOURCE]

I’m not which theologians she is referring to, but for Catholic Social teaching on the notion of wages I would go to the source of modern Catholic Social Teaching – Pope Leo XIII. In his seminal encyclical Rerum Novarum he outlined several principles of just wages. It is worth noting that the tradition of just wages is based on the medieval notion of the just price, a common church teaching several centuries old.

The word ‘just’ is critical. It is does not refer to just as automatically coming from the negotiations between a willing buyer and willing seller as found in economic versions of justice. Theologians commonly hold to other versions of justice, as Leo XIII outlines:

Wages, as we are told, are regulated by free consent, and therefore the employer, when he pays what was agreed upon, has done his part and seemingly is not called upon to do anything beyond. The only way, it is said, in which injustice might occur would be if the master refused to pay the whole of the wages, or if the workman should not complete the work undertaken; in such cases the public authority should intervene, to see that each obtains his due, but not under any other circumstances. (Rerum Novarum, ¶43)

Leo XIII goes on to say that in the case of wages, there is a higher natural law than the market governing what it is right to pay someone:

Let the working man and the employer make free agreements, and in particular let them agree freely as to the wages; nevertheless, there underlies a dictate of natural justice more imperious and ancient than any bargain between man and man, namely, that wages ought not to be insufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner. (Rerum Novarum, ¶45)

So even from this one source we may conclude that the Catholic Church has good reasons for supporting the Living Wage campaign and argue against wages that are too low for families to support themselves. But there is another issue here that Catholic Social Teaching can shed light on, and that is the notion of Wage Slavery.

This notion has been a concern of the Catholic form of social theology called Distributism. Distributism is an interpretation of Catholic Social Teaching which was promoted by Hilaire Belloc and G. K. Chesterton. Another distributist was the Irish Dominican Vincent McNabb, who advocated that while we should support a wage based on the standard of living (instead of a standard of dying!) we should also reject the idea that everyone should be a wage-earner. He thought that as many people as possible should own their own means to earn a living. The distributists believed that when people become wholly dependent on wages or the welfare state they were reduced to the status of slaves, hence, Belloc’s book The Servile State.

McNabb followed Leo XIII when he writes that:

The law, therefore, should favor ownership, and its policy should be to induce as many as possible of the people to become owners. (Rerum Novarum, ¶46)

By increasing ownership he thought that wage-earning would decrease, with favourable social benefits. For more on McNabb’s ideas see his The Church and the Land.

It would be interesting to learn how many New Zealanders who were previously owners of their own businesses or owned their own means of production (perhaps by being artisans or independent tradespeople) are now reduced to the status of wage-earners in the employ of others. For example, how many butchers and bakers have been driven to shut up shop, only to be employed behind the counters at large supermarkets? They might still make ends meet, but they have sacrificed no small amount of freedom in the process.

Is a living or minimum wage the best some people can now hope for? Or can we also value the small business person to gain some control over their economic life by being a owner of their own business?

Sadly in New Zealand too many people can only aspire to be a wage-earner and rent-payer, rather than a owner of their own home paid for by their earned surplus.